With the exception of Michel Platini, no one can want Michel Platini to be exonerated of any unpleasantness more than Greg Dyke. The Football Association chairman has made himself a hostage to fortune; perhaps Stockholm syndrome was the next logical step.

Dyke announced all the way back in July that we would be backing Platini for the Fifa presidency – and you’ll have spotted that use of the football “we”, there. Speak for England, Greg! Or rather, speak for yourself. We back Platini, which is to say the FA does, because the Uefa president appears sympathetic to our hobby horse of “dwindling opportunities for homegrown players”.

Which is to say, Greg’s hobby horse. We hadn’t seen a word of his manifesto, we hadn’t even established whether a more appealing candidate might decide to stand – Baron von Greenback, for instance, or one of the lesser middle eastern dictators’ nephews. But we backed Platini anyway.

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Alas, in a shocking turn of events that could only have been anticipated by a few million casual observers of the situation, it turns out that the man who was Sepp Blatter’s protege and his special adviser for four years took a payment of £1.35m from Blatter shortly before Sepp was elected unopposed to his fourth presidential term.

This transaction is now under criminal investigation by the Swiss attorney general, along with Blatter himself. At this stage the AG classes Platini as “between a witness and an accused person”, with the latter insisting the money was payment for legitimate services rendered. Albeit nine years belated. Hey, it happens. Greg somehow got a £456,000 payoff from the BBC after completely mishandling the corporation’s response to Andrew Gilligan’s Today programme report on the dodgy Iraq dossier – although in fairness to the Beeb it coughed that one up in timely fashion. Blatter told Platini Fifa couldn’t afford to pay him in 2002.

Even so, it must be said that Platini is rapidly emerging as the most obvious continuity candidate since Yuri Andropov, if increasingly unlikely to stay in post as long. His current embarrassment throws the spotlight once again on Dyke’s decision to show the FA’s hand when he did, given it was highly likely that further damaging Fifa revelations were on the cards.

On this form, Greg could be beaten at poker by Le Chiffre, the Bond villain whose fondness for high-stakes buy-in is faintly baffling, considering his tell is that he actually cries blood. I don’t want to state the obvious – bleeding or otherwise – but you’d think Mr Chiffre would be happier with a few gentle rounds of mahjong.

That might be rather more Greg’s level, too. When he took the FA job, my only fervently held hope was that nothing very important would come up on his watch. Which went well. At the time of the first wave of Fifa arrests, Dyke was still humble-bragging the arse off the story when interviewed by this newspaper. “People keep coming up to me and saying: ‘Well done, you got rid of him!’” he claimed exultantly of Blatter. “To which I say: ‘I think the FBI had more to do with it than me.’”

Too kind, Greg. Still, who could fail to dispute his record of adoring encounters in a country where love and respect for the FA generally comes second only to family. Perhaps the takeout line from that interview, though, was one that offers a clue to how Greg approaches the business of being in charge of something that a lot of people mind about, and why he is now emerging as the aforementioned hostage to fortune: “The advantage of being old – well, of being old and having made money – is that you don’t give a fuck.”

Greg doesn’t give a fuck, he was at pains to point out (somewhat unnecessarily), and his tenure at Wembley has certainly borne that out. He DGAF about challenging the stranglehold of the Premier League, for instance, as his shrinking of the FA staff by 100 back in August may well indicate. Or perhaps he hoped – hopes? – a victorious Platini would belatedly do it for him.

Ultimately, we must conclude that Greg DGAF about looking an idiot, because an averagely bright teenager could have worked out that further Fifa revelations were to come, and that our support for a damaged candidate – voiced unnecessarily prematurely – would only reflect poorly on us. As indeed it has, and is likely to continue doing so.

Thus Dyke has painted himself into a ludicrous doublethink, which he is still – hilariously – attempting to brazen out in public. The other day found him pontificating about the Fifa “meltdown” after news broke that Blatter was under criminal investigation, but in the next breath urging caution over his chosen candidate’s local difficulty. “We don’t know what these allegations are,” he claimed of the Platini payment. “We need to see what the evidence is, and see if anyone gets charged. So at the moment, we wouldn’t want to talk about that.”

So circumspect! In a way. I suppose the only bright spot is that Greg has stated that the FA gig will be his final big job, so this should be the last time he recurs infuriatingly again in British public life, like a non-fuck-giving version of Kenneth Widmerpool in A Dance to the Music of Time. Still, what a way to go. He certainly was the FA’s continuity candidate, ensuring England continue to give away more moral high ground than even possession in major tournaments.